Santa Cruz”s Ariel Rittenhouse and American teammate Kelci Bryant on Thursday advanced to the finals of the women”s 3-meter synchronized diving event at the 13th FINA World Championships in Rome.

Rittenhouse and Bryant took seventh with 293.40 points in the preliminaries. The top 12 advanced to today”s final.

In 2007, the American pair finished 10th at worlds.

China”s Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia dominated the preliminaries, putting them in line to win their fourth world title as a team.

Guo, already the winningest diver in world championship history with nine titles, will be going for her fifth straight synchro win on the springboard in today”s final at Stadio del Nuoto. It would be her fourth teamed with Wu, also her partner while winning the last two Olympic titles.

Guo and Wu had the best marks for each of the five rounds Thursday and totaled 342.90 points. The Italian team of Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallape was second with 316.20, followed by Russia”s Julia Pakhalina and Anastasia Pozniakova with 305.49.

On Tuesday, Rittenhouse established herself as one of the world”s elite individual divers by placing fifth in the 3-meter event.

Rittenhouse, 18, who reached the Olympics in synchronized diving in 2008 and the worlds in synchro in 2007, became the first American woman to place in the top five at worlds since Karen Dalton did it in 1994.